The site of my first job out of school. In 1989, fresh from 6 years of priestly education, I went to Hamburg for the summer with 3 friends. With next to no German, I ended up getting a job at the Kühne pickling factory. They're famous for their gherkins, which I spent 4 months working with - putting into jars, sorting out on the conveyor belt [ the categories were big, small, curvy, rotten ], filling the mustard vats, stacking crates of hot tins. It was mind numbing and back breaking. The stink of vinegar hit you about half a mile from the plant, which was huge. And the stench followed us home too. My cousin Roisín recently visited from Germany and brought me this jar as a souvenir of my past labours. They didn't taste half bad actually, after all my talk over the years about how I could never eat anything Kühne ever again.
